Bob CollinsBob Dylan played Ho Chi Minh City last night, and left out the peace anthems that made him famous during the Vietnam War. A spokesperson said Dylan had to submit his set list to the government ahead of time, just as he had when he played Beijing last week.
Bob Dylan: Sellout?
New York Times’ columnist Maureen Dowd certainly thinks so:
Sean Wilentz, the Princeton professor who wrote “Bob Dylan in America,” said that the Chinese were “trying to guard the audience from some figure who hasn’t existed in 40 years. He’s been frozen in aspic in 1963 but he’s not the guy in the work shirt and blue jeans singing ‘Masters of War.’ ”
Wilentz and Hajdu say you can’t really censor Dylan because his songs are infused with subversion against all kinds of authority, except God. He’s been hard on bosses, courts, pols and anyone corrupted by money and power.
Maybe the songwriter should reread some of his own lyrics: “I think you will find/When your death takes its toll/All the money you made/Will never buy back your soul.”
It must be difficult to be an icon from the ’60s, held dear and expected not to change by people who likely have.
Here’s last night’s set list:
# Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking
# It Ain’t Me, Babe
# Beyond Here Lies Nothin’
# Tangled Up In Blue
# Honest With Me
# Simple Twist Of Fate
# Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
# Love Sick
# The Levee’s Gonna Break
# A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
# Highway 61 Revisited
# Spirit On The Water
# My Wife’s Home Town
# Jolene
# Ballad Of A Thin Man
# Like A Rolling Stone
# All Along The Watchtower
# Forever Young
